Challenges emanating from non-payment for municipal services in Bitou Municipality
- Authors: Noholoza, Malungisa
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Local government -- South Africa -- Evaluation , Debts, Public -- South Africa -- Western Cape Collecting of accounts -- South Africa -- Western Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MPA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/33453 , vital:32875
- Description: Local Government has an obligation to provide access to basic services in an economical, effective and efficient manner within their limited financial resources and capacity. However, municipalities are struggling to provide these services because of non-payment by the communities. The non-payment for municipal services dates back to the apartheid regime, where non-payment of services was a means of protesting the apartheid government but that protest is becoming a thorny issue in the current democratic government of South Africa. Municipalities are currently facing increasing challenges with regard to service delivery due to insufficient revenue collection. The South African legislative framework provides for municipalities to collect revenue but it has been shown in this study that municipalities have not been effective in dealing with the revenue collection and as a result, municipalities’ constitutional mandate is in dire straits. Revenue collection needs to be addressed for municipalities to be successful. With the use of qualitative methodology, this study found that the Bitou Municipality is struggling to decrease the current rate of outstanding debt and the attempts undertaken by the municipality to address revenue collection have not yielded the intended results. The study was aimed at identifying the challenges behind non-payment for basic services, identifying the debt and credit control strategies employed by the municipality in revenue collection and their effectiveness or non-effectiveness and assessing the municipality’s methods of credit and debt control. The theoretical data in the study was analysed in order to answer the objectives of the study and the challenges emanating from the non-payment for municipal services in the Bitou Municipality. The study found that non-payment for municipal services is an on-going problem.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Using natural user interfaces to support synchronous distributed collaborative work
- Authors: Potgieter, Timothy Kyle
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Human-computer interaction User interfaces (Computer systems) Teams in the workplace -- Computer networks
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSc
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/10880 , vital:26832
- Description: Synchronous Distributed Collaborative Work (SDCW) occurs when group members work together at the same time from different places together to achieve a common goal. Effective SDCW requires good communication, continuous coordination and shared information among group members. SDCW is possible because of groupware, a class of computer software systems that supports group work. Shared-workspace groupware systems are systems that provide a common workspace that aims to replicate aspects of a physical workspace that is shared among group members in a co-located environment. Shared-workspace groupware systems have failed to provide the same degree of coordination and awareness among distributed group members that exists in co-located groups owing to unintuitive interaction techniques that these systems have incorporated. Natural User Interfaces (NUIs) focus on reusing natural human abilities such as touch, speech, gestures and proximity awareness to allow intuitive human-computer interaction. These interaction techniques could provide solutions to the existing issues of groupware systems by breaking down the barrier between people and technology created by the interaction techniques currently utilised. The aim of this research was to investigate how NUI interaction techniques could be used to effectively support SDCW. An architecture for such a shared-workspace groupware system was proposed and a prototype, called GroupAware, was designed and developed based on this architecture. GroupAware allows multiple users from distributed locations to simultaneously view and annotate text documents, and create graphic designs in a shared workspace. Documents are represented as visual objects that can be manipulated through touch gestures. Group coordination and awareness is maintained through document updates via immediate workspace synchronization, user action tracking via user labels and user availability identification via basic proxemic interaction. Members can effectively communicate via audio and video conferencing. A user study was conducted to evaluate GroupAware and determine whether NUI interaction techniques effectively supported SDCW. Ten groups of three members each participated in the study. High levels of performance, user satisfaction and collaboration demonstrated that GroupAware was an effective groupware system that was easy to learn and use, and effectively supported group work in terms of communication, coordination and information sharing. Participants gave highly positive comments about the system that further supported the results. The successful implementation of GroupAware and the positive results obtained from the user evaluation provides evidence that NUI interaction techniques can effectively support SDCW.
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- Date Issued: 2014